After watching the horrendous images on
television of the havoc wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, Jeff
Davis, principal of the Maimonides Upper School at the 700-student San
Diego Jewish Academy decided it was time for action. At religious
services Sept. 2--the Friday before Labor Day weekend--he figuratively blew
the shofar: he told students that "when you see suffering it is not
just enough to think, 'oh how terrible, that is, because Judaism is
about your deeds." He urged the students to "dig deep"
and try to collect food, toiletries, and clothes, adding that if they
would accept his challenge, he and Parent Teacher Organization President
Scott Brown would load the donations into a U-haul truck and
drive them to an evacuee center in Houston, Texas.

The following week, Davis apologized to his
students--for grossly underestimating their ability to mobilize the
community. It would have taken far more than a single U-haul truck to
carry all the goods that the students, and other contributors from the
Jewish and general communities, brought to the grounds of the San Diego
Jewish Academy on the Sunday and Monday of Labor Day weekend.
Cars lined up outside the campus in Carmel Valley, bringing so many
donations it became clear an 18-wheel truck and trailer might be necessary.
Then it was realized even that was unrealistic; they would need two--no
three, er four--make, it five, 18-wheelers to transport all the heartfelt
donations. Alan Goldstein, a pilot and husband of Meg
Goldstein--SDJA's development director--was one of hundreds of parent and
student volunteers who accepted the donated goods, sorted them, and boxed
them for shipment to the evacuees. Realizing just how much material
needed to be transported to Houston, he telephoned his bosses at UPS, and
asked them use of a 757 cargo plane for the effort. He volunteered to
fly the plane without pay, and got another Jewish pilot, Dean Birnbaum, to
volunteer for co-pilot duties. And still the cargo plane was not big
enough for all the goods collected by San Diego Jewish Academy. UPS had
to send the overflow material by truck.

Andrew Miller, the newly elected student
president of SDJA's Maimonides Upper School, perhaps personified the spirit
of the students. Besides packing and loading boxes over the holiday
weekend, he went out and solicited contributions, receiving $25,000 in items
from one grocery store on the condition that the donation be anonymous.

Marsha Berkson, one of three co-chairs of the
school's Tikkun Olam committee, described the response of the
students as an outgrowth of "the values that we teach at the school
about deeds of loving kindness, tzedakah and tikkun olam."
She said when last December's tsunami swamped large portions of Southern
Asia, killing more than a hundred thousand people with nearly as many listed
as "missing," students surrounded her as she walked into the
parking lot one day and asked what could they do. When Hurricane
Katrina came, even closer to home, there was a school-wide desire to
respond. Even the little kids did everything they could to help.

On Labor Day, Berkson said, "we had
a ton of shoes, so what we did was to have the little kids match them all
up--the 4 to 7-year-olds--and it was great--they were actually productive
sorting these shoes. Davis said that on Tuesday, along with
parents and administrators, approximately 100 older students were
allowed to leave class to help pack boxes. Having that many kids
working on a project, "ordinarily would be like trying to herd
cats," Davis said, but this project was different. "Every kid was
focused, they grabbed their boxes, they weren't horsing around, and at one
point they were packing about 250 boxes an hour-- which was the rate
necessary to get 5,000 boxes packed in such a short period of time."
The principal added that it wasn't to get out of classes that the students
volunteered. "They were doing it because it was the right thing to do,
and they felt it."

Miller, Berkson, Davis and others--there were
many volunteers who all deserve credit for this project--flew on an
anonymously donated chartered jet to Houston in order to be on hand
when the UPS cargo plane arrived on Friday, Sept. 9. Ceremonies
were particularly moving in Houston where, Berkson recalled, people started
crying when they heard that what had started as one school's project swelled
into an outpouring of love and concern from San Diego's entire Jewish
community. One of those moved to tears was an African-American UPS
driver, who also was a minister of his Southern Baptist Church.
Afterwards he confided in Berkson that he never had been all that friendly
toward the Jewish people, but after seeing what the San Diego Jewish
Community had done, he had a change of heart. Berkson told
him that Jews are taught the doctrine of "tikkun olam,"
repair of the world, and the man's eyes brightened. "Tikkun
olam," he repeated several times, having Berkson write down the
words for him. "I'm going to tell about that in my sermons."

Some of the goods were distributed by
the Houston Jewish Federation in cooperation with the Star of Hope Mission, helping
not only to repair the world, but to repair what had been some past tension
between Houston's Christian and Jewish communities, according to Berkson.
Miller and other students visited the mission to watch the goods being
distributed. They remembered, in particular, one youngster their
age who, with some embarrassment, was wearing fuzzy slippers--no
real shoes that could fit him being available until the SDJA shipment
arrived.

Miller also recalled meeting some
students from New Orleans who had been accepted on an emergency basis into
the Emery/ Weiner Academy, Houston's counterpart to the San Diego Jewish
Academy. SDJA's student president added that one of the evacuees from
New Orleans told him that while watching television after her evacuation
"she could see her neighborhood from the chopper cam, and she got
pretty emotional about how her house was under water. She was so
thankful that we were there to provide some relief."

As important and as large as the San Diego Jewish
Academy's effort was in behalf of the Katrina victims, no one in San Diego's
Jewish community was saying "dayenu" or "it is
enough." There were other projects going on throughout the
community--from the individual effort of David Perez, the CEO of Surge
Global Energy, whose decision to charter private planes and fly
refugees to San Diego was well publicized by the general media--to those of
a variety of other Jewish agencies and schools, which directed

At Jacob Health Care Center, Sylvia
Lerner, 87, started a fund by having the nurses at the center put in $1
and according to her, everyone who came started putting in money also.
Various synagogues sent out newsletters and emails to their congregants
urging monetary contributions to the UJF fund, and some turned themselves
into satellite pick up points for the San Diego Jewish Academy's drive.

Soille
San Diego Hebrew Day School reported that its middle school students
"gained particular insight into the human side of the tragic events
unfolding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina through their discussions
with Rabbi (Chaim) Hollander, who lived and taught in New Orleans from
1977-81, and lived through the last major storm to hit the city." The
school on Monday, Sept. 12, held a "special Tefilah assembly
involving the entire shool in prayer on behalf of the victims and all who
are suffering due to Katrina," according to a spokesman.
"Our students are learning the classic Jewish responses to such
tragedies: tefilah --to sincerely pray for compassion for the
victim-- and chessed, to make significant efforts to alleviate
suffering and show concern and kindness."